Sliver of Hope in the Middle East

Israel’s security cooperation with Egypt has strengthened in the past two years, and a mutual dissatisfaction with US policy has brought it on the same page as Saudi Arabia. Will the Jewish nation’s ties with its neighbours finally blossom in the Arab Spring?

In his address to the Winter Session of the Knesset earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an important comment that has gone largely unnoticed. He said: “For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, a growing understanding is taking root in the Arab world, and it is not always said softly. This understanding, that Israel is not the enemy of Arabs and that we have a united front on many issues, might advance new possibilities in our region.” The statements were made in reference to the tremendous upheaval that the region has witnessed since 2011 and placed against the background narrative of radical Islam gaining ground in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Prime Minister Netanyahu now believes that this narrative is flawed; that radical Islam’s assumption of power is “neither inevitable or nor irreversible”, as the common man doesn’t support the extremists.

While only time will tell if Mr Netanyahu’s assessments (which many believe to be a tad bit too optimistic) are correct, and more importantly if Israel will be able to leverage these shifts in regional power equations to push for a less-hostile neighbourhood, there is, however, some reason to hope for the better. We see this primarily in Israel’s relations with Egypt and to a lesser extent with Saudi Arabia.

In the case of Egypt, Israel’s peace with the world’s largest Arab nation has held strong despite the tumultuous changes that have taken place in that country since 2011. In fact, when the autocratic but relatively secular regime of President Hosni Mubarak was ousted, there were concerns that the Egypt-Israel peace treaty that has been the anchor for regional stability for four decades now, would fall apart. These concerns gained strength especially after the Muslim Brotherhood, which barely recognises Israel’s right to exist, was voted to power last year and Mr Mohammed Morsi became President. And his removal from office earlier this year did little to assuage those fears.

Yet, despite all of this, the treaty has not fallen apart — as many had feared. Instead, it has paved the way for unprecedented military and strategic cooperation between Israel and Egypt in the past two years. As Ehud Yaari at the Washington Institute notes, “Israeli and Egyptian officers hold almost daily meetings and have established an efficient system of communications. This cooperation stems from a mutual interest in curbing the terrorist factions that have emerged in Sinai over the past decade, threatening both the Israeli border and the Egyptian control over the peninsula.”

A good example of this kind of cooperation, and the mutual trust that it quietly engenders, lies in the fact that earlier this year when Egypt wanted to temporarily deploy its troops in areas of eastern Sinai where they are generally not allowed, Israel agreed. This was an especially big deal because the sanctioned deployment was in excess of what the peace treaty provides for.

Zack Gold, who studies Israeli-Egyptian security cooperation in the Sinai Peninsula, has also observed that “Jihadi action over the past two years has purposefully attempted to embarrass the Egyptian military, expose Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, and draw Israel into a cross-border response.” In an attempt to inject bad blood between Egyptian and Israeli troops, terrorists in fact raided Israeli targets wearing Egyptian uniforms.

Yet, in spite of these many challenges, the treaty has proved to be resilient much like it had during previous times of turbulence — such as the two Palestinian Intifadas, the two Lebanon wars and rounds of fighting Israel-Hamas fighting in the Gaza strip. While the treaty may have failed to forge greater socio-economic cooperation between the two countries of the kind that had been envisaged at the end of the Yom Kippur war, the last war waged by an Arab nation against Israel, its strategic benefits cannot be overstated. Not only has it fostered a ‘cold peace’ between the two nations, protecting lives and territory, it has also now seemingly encouraged Israeli-Egypt cooperation on the global platform.

For instance, after the Egyptian military ousted President Morsi from office, Israel lobbied hard with Washington, DC, to not label it a coup — even though that was exactly what it was. Terming it as such would have immediately ended the flow of all American aid to Egypt and upset the generals in Cairo. Of course, the Obama Administration has since then still partially suspended its hefty aid package to Egypt, its biggest Arab ally, at a time of widespread instability in the Maghreb and Mashreq, and no doubt the decision has come under intense scrutiny from several quarters.

Some experts, such as Princeton scholar Sharanbir Grewal, believe that it was the Obama Administration’s “smartest possible option”. Writing for a Washington Post blog, he notes that by halting cash assistance and delivery of large-scale military systems such as F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, M1A1 tanks, and Harpoon missiles, while leaving support for counter-terrorism programmes and economic assistance untouched, Washington, DC, has demonstrated “resourcefulness in maximizing what little leverage it has over Egypt.” He argues that the US has hit the generals where it hurts them the most (the boys in Cairo love their big, shiny, toys) while causing almost no damage to American national interests.

But most policy-makers and security analysts do not share his optimism. While some have criticised the Obama Administration for cutting too much aid that will only lead to further erosion of Washington’s leverage in Cairo, others believe that it has cut too little and, therefore, exposed itself as a toothless tiger desperate for Egyptian support to maintain its influence in the Arab world. And then are others who believe that the partial cut sends out yet another muddled message of the kind that has come to characterise the Obama Administration’s Arab Spring policy. Ultimately, though the strongest criticism of America’s decision to cut aid to Egypt has come from what many would consider to be an unlikely quarter: The State of Israel.

Irrespective of the merits of the debate on US aid to Egypt, the point to be noted here is that it was yet another instance of diverging Israeli and American interests in the region. Washington’s decision to cut aid to Egypt came around the same time it chose to respond positively to Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s peace overtures. This has sent alarm bells ringing in Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned against his counterpart in Tehran being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and also in Riyadh where the royals have made clear that the US is violating the terms of their protection racket by warming up to Tehran. Clearly, mutual dissatisfaction over US foreign policy has brought Israel and Saudi Arabia closer than ever before. It is, of course, still unclear if Israel in the near future will be able to have peaceful ties with its Arab neighbours but a sliver of hope seems to be emerging.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 31, 2013)

Futile Bid at Damage Control

Foreign policy will not be among the glorious legacies that Manmohan Singh will leave behind. But that will not be for want of trying, although on many occasions he blundered badly. Ties with Pakistan remain strained, since he has been repeatedly outsmarted 

Coming at the tail end of his almost decade-long prime ministerial tenure, Mr Manmohan Singh’s trip to the US for the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly should, ideally, have been about consolidating, if not celebrating, his foreign policy legacy. Instead, it turned out to be a last-ditch attempt to salvage his image. Be it his lacklustre speech to the General Assembly or his meetings with US President Barack Obama, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, each one of these was essentially just an exercise in damage control. Here’s how:

The Singh-Sharif Meet: That this one was even held in the first place is  a little victory for Mr Singh. The meeting was not confirmed until the very last minute, and exactly a day after it was finalised a terror attack in Jammu that claimed nearly a dozen lives, put tremendous pressure on the Prime Minister to call off the talk. Such incidents have been happening with increased frequency since Mr Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan earlier this year. Earlier, we had the brutal beheading of two Indian soldiers in January. Since then, there has continued ceasefire violations along the Line of Control — and most in New Delhi believed that the time was not right for a high-level summit. But having still committed himself to the New York meet, Mr Singh was right in not caving to forces that wanted to disrupt the peace process. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the only positive take-away from the Singh-Sharif meet — and few are possibly more disappointed about this than Mr Singh himself.

Having spent his entire nine years in office nurturing the fond hope that he will be the one to script a landmark India-Pakistan peace deal, sometimes even at the cost of India’s security interests, in the final analysis Mr Singh has been able to do next to nothing. This is despite the fact that he inherited Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s legacy of vastly improved bilateral ties between the two countries. He clearly failed to carry it forward. In this context, the New York meeting was little more than a pointless conciliatory gesture from India that made the Pakistani Prime Minister (who came to power promising better ties with New Delhi) look good, and gave the latter the opportunity to bid Mr Singh farewell.

At best, it was also an excuse for some diplomatic amusement — and no, this is not a reference to Mr Sharif’s PJ about village women, but that he, of all people, would whine about India taking up Pakistan’s shenanigans with the US when it was he who had pleaded for Washington to intervene during the Kargil conflict.

The Singh-Obama Meet: This one came at a time when the India-US bilateral has slowed down significantly, having initially raced forth into the 21st century. The decade between 1998 and 2008 saw the India-US relationship come into its own with the world’s largest democracy forging a strong sense of fellowship with the world’s most powerful democracy and acknowledging each other as natural partners. For the first time, Washington’s India policy was dehyphenated from Pakistan while the landmark nuclear deal literally energised the India-US bilateral. In Washington, President George W Bush had used all his political capital to push through that deal while in New Delhi, Prime Minister Singh put his Government at stake. But, if in those years, India and the US were like teenagers in the throes of first love, as one analyst put it, post-2008 their relationship seems to have matured and settled into a humdrum routine. And so, ambitious plans for bilateral cooperation have got stuck in the bureaucratic maze that is as much Delhi as Washington — think of the nuclear liability clause, the tightening of the visa regime and restrictive trade practices. Unfortunately neither Mr Singh, who has already been reduced to a lame-duck Prime Minister, nor Mr Obama, whose Government is shutting down, was currently in a position to resolve any of these issues, even though now would have been the time to give the India-US bilateral that extra push so that it doesn’t plateau before reaching its full potential. And so, the nuclear negotiations, for one, have been left for a later date.

Still, the meeting was not as much of a failure as some had predicted it would be. President Obama, for instance, deserves credit for being graceful enough to spare Mr Singh the litany of complaints against Indian trade practices that American companies have thrown at him. Similarly, Prime Minister Singh, often derided for being soft on terror, deserves a word in praise for highlighting the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, particularly the support that organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba receive from state actors in that country. Indeed, Mr Singh’s description of Pakistan as the “epicentre of terror” took many by surprise. Also, talks on defence co-operation between Ashton Carter and Shiv Shankar Menon have been positive, with the US offering a deal to India that, it claims, it has not offered to its Nato allies even.

The Singh-Hasina Meet: Though largely ignored in the international and the national media, this was possibly the most important of Mr Singh’s engagement, given that it was the only meeting that had the potential of immediate impact. While the Prime Minister’s discussions with Prime Minister Sharif and President Obama would have done little to change the ground realities of either the India-Pakistan or the India-US bilateral, his talks with Ms Hasina was crucial to India-Bangladesh relations, which are at a crossroads. This bilateral too has evolved significantly in the recent past, thanks primarily to Ms Hasina who has left no stone unturned to address India’s primary concerns regarding terror fugitives hiding in Bangladesh. But Mr Singh and his Government have failed to put the deliverables from their end — the land border agreement and the Teesta water deal — on the table. This has left Ms Hasina, who is bracing for a tough re-election battle later this year, in an uncomfortable position. The Prime Minister has promised to push these measures through during the Winter Session of Parliament. In the meantime, the progress made in the power-sharing deal — the two leaders will jointly inaugurate a power transmission system on October 5 — is good diplomacy. It will hopefully placate to some extent an otherwise very disappointed Ms Hasina.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 3, 2013)

Deal for Everybody and Nobody

The US-Russia deal on Syria will neither bring peace nor will it punish the Assad regime. Yet, it is being dubbed a success because it makes world leaders, who have failed to stop the killing of more than a lakh people, feel good about themselves

At a Press conference in London on September 9, US Secretary of State John Kerry was asked if there was anything the Assad regime could do to stop Western military intervention in Syria, which at the time seemed imminent. America’s top diplomat replied somewhat oddly: “Sure”, he said, adding, “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn’t about to do it. And it can’t be done, obviously.”

The State Department downplayed Mr Kerry’s response saying that he was just being rhetorical. But Mr Kerry’s counterpart in Russia, a diplomat of far greater calibre, Mr Sergey Lavrov, seized the moment. He spoke to Mr Kerry in-flight and before the American had even landed in Washington, DC, the situation on the ground had shifted considerably: Russia had offered to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, its friend and ally in Damascus, to hand over to the international community his chemical weapons stockpile — and in the process, had suddenly averted war, at least for the time being.

After that 14-minute-long in-flight  conversation on Monday (September 9) between Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov, things moved at breakneck pace. With America having consented to the deal, Mr Obama called off the scheduled Congressional vote on military intervention; Mr Kerry, Mr Lavrov and their posse of security aides hurriedly met in Geneva on Thursday to hammer out the details; the deal was finalised on Saturday and quickly accepted by the Assad regime which, by the way, until then had not even acknowledged the existence of its chemical weapons stockpile.

The following Monday, UN inspectors confirmed that chemical weapons were used in the August 21 attack in east Ghouta that triggered this international response, but stopped short of pinning the blame on the Assad regime; on Tuesday, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council met in New York to discuss the deal and negotiations will continue over the next few days.

Anyway, a final resolution that can be presented before the entire 15-member Council is not possible unless the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Executive Council in The Hague approves a plan on how to deal with Syria’s chemical weapons. This plan is not expected until Friday at the earliest.

In the meantime, the deal, dubbed as the greatest US-Russia joint diplomatic effort since the unification of Germany, has already run into troubled waters. While the rest of the Western powers want military intervention in case of non-compliance to be part of the deal, Russia believes that such a clause would hamper the peace effort and make the Assad regime uncooperative — especially since there is no definite proof that it was Damascus that carried out the August 21 attack. Russia is also opposed to the draft resolution being covered by Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which gives the Security Council authority to enforce its decisions through the use of force or the imposition of sanctions. Instead, in case of non-compliance, it wants members to come back to the Security Council and seek a fresh mandate for military intervention. In all probability, UN diplomats will just draft a resolution whose deliberately vague language will appease all parties.

So let us assume that the UN Security Council will pass a resolution paving the way for the transfer and eventual destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. The question then is:How will it be implemented? The answer is President Assad will lead UN weapons inspectors to his stockpiles and then stand aside while they take over his weapons — even as a civil war rages in the backdrop.

If you are sceptical already, wait till we get to the details. First, there is no clarity on what will be covered under the chemical weapons tag and what kind of delivery systems will be neutralised since many of these systems also deliver conventional weapons. Second, there is no solid intelligence on the quantity of chemical weapons stocked in Syria and/or their exact locations. There were supposedly 42 sites before the war but now the regime has been moving the weapons all over the country. Third, after the chemicals have been located, it will still take several months, if not years, to destroy them (think of the nightmarish Iraqi experience). And it will require boots on the ground — apart from the UN inspectors, the Pentagon estimates at least 75,000 troops will be needed to secure the sites. Finally, of course, all of this will have to happen in the middle of a civil war wherein UN inspectors and foreign troops will be walking right into the heart of the Syrian battlefield with the Assad regime as their guardian angel.

This overt dependence on the Assad regime is one of the biggest pitfalls of the deal because Damascus has proven itself to be unreliable and untrustworthy. In the past three years, it has repeatedly made promises to buy time from the international community and then violated them. There is no reason to believe that President Assad will now cooperate with the West. Even Muammar Gaddafi, who voluntarily gave up his chemical weapons to end Libya’s international isolation, had put away a secret stash that was discovered unguarded in the middle of the desert after his death in 2011.

For all practical purposes, this Syria peace deal is ready to crash even before it gets off the ground. So why are world leaders scrambling all over the globe to bring this together? The answer is simple: Because it makes them, all of them — Messrs Putin, Obama and Assad — look good.

The deal is a diplomatic coup for Mr Putin who has resurrected Russia’s image from a Cold War relic to a 21st century superpower that is capable of protecting its allies and resisting the US-led West. It has also helped him reiterate Moscow’s influence in West Asia where it had been relegated to the position of a bit player vis-à-vis Washington.

Interestingly, Mr Putin had first suggested the deal to Mr Obama at the G-20 summit in St Petersburg (before the Kerry-Lavrov talk) but neither the US President nor British Prime Minister David Cameron, with whom the matter was also discussed, saw any merit in the idea. But clearly, the Russian President was a few steps ahead — which explains why at a Press conference soon after, he referred to a possible peace deal without giving any detail.

As for President Obama, the deal is the desperate face-saver he needed to extricate himself from the ‘Red Line’ narrative in which he had foolishly entwined himself. It also means he no longer has to go to a war he didn’t want to in the first place — that Nobel was beginning to feel heavy.

Finally, for President Assad, the deal allows him to also breathe easy now that the chances of a military intervention have been drastically reduced. It also means he can continue with his daily massacres, as long as he doesn’t use chemical weapons again — which works just fine for him.

In fact, the deal has effectively taken the spotlight away from the killings by conventional weapons and focussed it narrowly on chemical weapons. This brings us to the only losers in the deal: The people of Syria, who will continue to be butchered by both the regime and the rebel forces.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 19, 2013)

Maldives Gets a Second Chance at Democracy

By securing the largest vote-share in the September 7 election, deposed President Mohamed Nasheed has re-established his popular credentials. But he still has to complete an uphill trek before he can move back into the Muliaage

Nineteen months after their first democratically elected leader was coerced out of office, on September 7, the people of Maldives returned to the hustings once again to take a second shot at democracy. They came in large numbers — voter turnout was at an impressive 88 per cent — and reinforced their mandate in favour of deposed President Mohamed Nasheed. The charismatic leader who first came to power in 2008 after defeating Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Asia’s longest serving autocract, this time received  an impressive 45.45 per cent of the votes. Former Minister and Mr Gayoom’s half-brother Abdulla Yameen came in second with 25.35 per cent votes, edging past business tycoon Gasim Ibrahim, who secured 24.07 per cent, while incumbent President Mohamed Waheed trailed far behind with 5.13 per cent of votes. However, even though Mr Nasheed has the largest vote-share, it still falls about five per cent (or approximate 10,000 votes) short of the stipulated 50 per cent-plus-one vote minimum needed to take charge. And so, on September 28, Mr Nasheed will face Mr Yameen in an electoral run-off.

This one will be a close call. Unlike in the first round of polling where it was a foregone conclusion that Mr Nasheed, arguably Maldives’s most popular leader, will secure the largest vote bloc, the dynamics change significantly in the second round as the non-Nasheed votes will tend to coalesce in favour of Mr Yameen. In this context that Mr Gasim, supposedly the country’s richest man, may emerge as the king-maker because his vote-share —considered to be the most transferable — could go either way.

If Mr Gasim throws his weight in favour of Mr Nasheed, as he had done back in 2008, the former President will have a strong chance of returning to power. However, Mr Gasim already has a loose (although some say reluctant) alliance of sorts with Mr Yameen. The two reportedly also have some commercial joint ventures planned together as well as share the other’s view of Maldives as a staunchly Islamic nation. If they do come together in the second round, Mr Nasheed will have a tough battle ahead of him as the Yameen-Gasim vote-share combine just about makes it to the 50 per cent mark. In such a situation, Mr Nasheed will absolutely have to win over the five per cent that went to Mr Waheed in the first round.

This is not an entirely unimaginable prospect. Mr Waheed contested as an independent candidate but represented a coalition of two small political outfits alongside two major players, the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party and the religious Adhaalath Party. It is unlikely that Mr Nasheed with win over AP supporters but he should be able to convert the significant support base of the DRP — a party that he believes is ideologically most similar to his own MDP.

Ultimately, though, these are all backhand calculations and unless more details emerge about pre-poll alliances it is difficult to make a detailed assessment. As for New Delhi, it would, of course, like to see Mr Nasheed return to power not only because he is an avowed friend of India but also because he is Maldives’s best bet for a stable and prosperous future which again is in India’s interests given the archipelago’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean region. After all, Mr Nasheed was the only presidential candidate who had a clear and detailed policy blueprint for the country.

Having initially bungled its response to the crisis in Male last year, New Delhi has since been able to get its act together. The Indian High Commission in Male did well to give refuge to Mr Nasheed earlier this year.India also worked with the US and other international partners to ensure that Mr Nasheed could fight the election in the first place — a major achievement given that the incumbent regime tried repeatedly to put him behind bars.  

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 13, 2013)

Reckless or feckless in Syria

The US is determined to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons and violating ‘red lines’ through a military intervention. Inadvisable as this may be, even a narrow targeted attack might be effective if well-planned. However, this does not seem to be the case

The debate on foreign military intervention in Syria is as complicated as the situation in Syria is itself, and it is difficult to do justice to the whole horde of issues — political, ideological, economic and strategic — that shape the conversation in this regard. So, let’s strip the discourse to its bare essentials and focus on two key issues here: First, why does President Barack Obama want to intervene in Syria? And second, what exactly does he plan to do?

The Assad regime has been at war with its own people since 2011 when it first used brutal police force to crackdown on peaceful protestors. Since then, President Bashar al-Assad has slowly but steadily intensified his campaign, using artillery fire and scud missiles even, and each time the West has responded with nothing more than a bland condemnatory statement. What changed in recent weeks is the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime — President Obama had designated this as a ‘red line’ — that reportedly killed  almost 1,500 people on August 21.

This flagrant breach of what the White House now likes to believe was an ‘international red line’ has to be punished, the Obama Administration has decided. The problem is that there is still no concrete proof that it was, in fact, the Assad regime that ordered the CW attack. The US intelligence assessment in this regard is flimsy; the UN is still investigating the attack; the French are the only ones with a detailed analysis of Mr Assad’s CW stockpile but still cannot pin the blame firmly on Damascus.

Also, the French and American estimates for the number of dead — 400 and 1,400+ respectively — do not match. The British peg the figure even lower at around 300. This is an important distinction because there were chemical attacks prior to August 21 but none elicited such a response, presumably because the body count was low. This brings us to the fallacy of using chemical weapons attacks as a ‘red line’ in the first place.

First, there is no evidence to suggest that chemical weapons kill more people than conventional weapons. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Second, there is an underlying assumption that there is something especially horrific about using a chemical agent as opposed to a conventional weapon. That does not make much sense. As the chemist James Conant, involved in the United States’ chemical weapons programme, wrote: “I did not see in 1917…  why tearing a man’s guts out by high explosive shell is to be preferred to maiming him by attacking his lungs.” In fact, some scholars have even argued that chemical weapons are more humane than conventional weapons but that is beside the point. The crux of the matter is that the international brouhaha over a CW attack is largely misplaced.

But still, let’s go with the flow and assume that President Assad who has been on a murderous spree for two years has now committed an exceptionally terrible crime by gassing his people, and therefore, deserves to be punished by the US (and the international community) or else it will be setting a dangerous precedent for other despots around the world. This brings us to the second aspect of how exactly President Obama intends to hand out this punishment — and it is here that the situation gets really murky. 

President Obama has proposed targeted, signature strikes — America fires a few missiles and bombs key military assets, thereby, weakening the regime and possibly forcing President Assad’s regime to the negotiating table. On the face of it, this seems like a quick, clean, surgical operation but dig below the surface and there lies a can of worms. First, what do these strikes hope to achieve? Is the US looking only to ‘deter’ further CW attacks or is it looking to significantly ‘degrade’ President Assad’s military capabilities?

If the elimination of chemical weapons-related targets is the only aim of US intervention, this is not a practical option. As military experts Chandler P Atwood and Michael Knights point out, the Assad regime is likely to be taking ‘defensive measures’ such as moving the stockpiles around, making it extremely difficult to target them unless the US can respond with persistent intelligence collection for which it will have to establish full control over Syrian airspace. Also, even after these stockpiles have been discovered, the US cannot bomb the chemical weapons. Boots on the ground will be needed. The US can choose to focus on CW delivery systems but even that will require rocket launchers, missiles and aircraft — in other words, a major military operation.

The other option, as Messers Atwood and Knight note, is to hit President Assad’s military assets such as the Damascus-based Fourth Armoured Division which was supposedly responsible for August 21 attack and the lethal 155th Brigade, led by the President’s brother. The US could also attack symbolic targets such as the Air Force intelligence headquarters and military bases in Dumair, Saiqal, Tiyas and Hama and ‘People’s Army’ units that are financed by Iran and trained by its militant Shia proxy Hezbollah. 

In fact, single targeted strikes can actually be quite effective, as Brigadier General Michael Herzog points out. For instance, this year Israel attacked two weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah and also the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in Damascus that was reportedly involved in the development of biological and chemical weapons. All three were targeted strikes (of the kind that Mr Obama fancies) and they were all successful in achieving Israel’s narrow goal of preventing Hezbollah from receiving weapons. But, the key to that success was careful planning and the element of surprise.

Unfortunately, President Obama does not seem to have planned targets and he has already frittered away the surprise advantage. In fact, he if really wanted to launch targeted strikes, he should have done it months ago when Mr Assad was losing ground and the rebels were advancing. A military intervention at that time could have actually tipped the balance in the Opposition’s favour (although, this is not to say that Syria’s Islamist infested, fractured rebel groups are a welcome alternative to the Assad regime). But the calculus has since changed, especially after Hezbollah threw in its weight in favour of the regime. Today, the Assad regime is in a stronger position and there is no reason for the President to willingly give up power.

There is also the matter of civilian casualties which cannot be ruled out, no matter how surgically precise the strikes, as most military experts acknowledge. Even Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that while the US can restrain its own actions, there are no guarantees for how the Assad regime (and its allies in the region) will retaliate.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 15, 2013)

Left to Fend for Itself in Asia

India remains an important player in the New Silk Road project which hopes to integrate the Afghan economy into that of Central and South Asia. But can it succeed without the US's help? America seems to have given up on the initiative

 From all available reports, there isn’t much to write home about the first India-China dialogue on Central Asia that happened in Beijing last week, apart from the fact that it happened. Still the two-day meet, which was similar in structure to the recent bilateral dialogues on Africa, West Asia, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism, managed to briefly move the spotlight to Central Asia — the newest theatre of Sino-Indian rivalry and the one where New Delhi is seemingly performing the worst.

The Dialogue may have been designed to bring both countries on the same page as they increase their engagement in Central Asia, but New Delhi knows well that Beijing has long since raced ahead of it. In fact, India lags behind not just China but all other major players in the region — definitely the US and Russia but also Iran and Turkey. This is despite the fact that India has civilisational ties with Central Asia that go back centuries; more recently, New Delhi has also made a conscious effort towards strengthening its presence in that region. The Government of India’s official Connect Central Asia policy was unveiled by Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed at the India-Central Asia Dialogue in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek in June 2012. More than a year later, the policy remains more aspirational than it is in the actual.

Yet, a strong presence in Central Asia is important for India for two key factors: Energy security and military security. In the first case, India currently receives almost all of its oil and gas from West Asia but given how volatile that region can be, it is a good idea to look for other suppliers. Moreover, as the country’s energy demands continue to grow, New Delhi has no choice but to tap into other sources. In this context, energy-rich and proximate Central Asia is best positioned to become India’s next big oil and gas supplier.

China faces much the same challenges (growing economy, growing population) — except that it seems to have responded to them much better, as is evident from the deep inroads that it has already made into the Central Asian energy market. Beijing’s two trillion-dollar-strong foreign exchange reserves and a ruthlessly efficient Government not encumbered by the demands of democracy, have meant it has consistently managed to out-bid New Delhi in oil deals not just in Central Asia but across the world. For example, just weeks before the dialogue in Beijing, India lost to China the world’s largest oil find in five decades — the giant Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan.

In November 2012, India’s state-run ONGC Videsh Limited had struck a deal with America’s ConocoPhillips to buy the latter’s 8.4 per cent stake in Kashagan for five billion dollars.  However, the deal fell through in July when the Kazakh Government itself stepped in and informed ConocoPhillips that its own national oil company, KazMunaiGaz, will buy the American company’s stake for the same amount. Kazakh law allows the Government certain pre-emption rights as a result of which it has the authority to buy any oil asset for sale in the country at the price agreed on by the buyer and seller. KazMunaiGaz will now sell that stake to China National Petroleum Corp for a reported $5.3-5.4 billion.

But China is only one of India’s problems in Central Asia. What has most significantly limited New Delhi’s diplomatic efforts in that region is a stubborn Pakistan which has wholly refused India overland access to Central Asia, through Afghanistan. Ideally this would have been the shortest route for India; however, that is not to be — one of the big reasons why the ambitious Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India oil pipeline project, for example, has been a non-starter.

Consequently, New Delhi has had to look for new routes that bypass Pakistan altogether. Towards that end, the North-South Transportation Corridor which connects India to the Central Asian region through Iran was envisaged as a game-changer. Initiated in 2003, this project aims to connect the port in Mumbai to the Iranian ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas through maritime transport, and then develop road and rail networks linking these two ports with Afghanistan and other Central Asian republics. Some initial progress was made in this regard — India’s Border Road Organisation invested $136 million to set up a road link from Zaranj to Delaran which was inaugurated in 2009. This 215km long road is a crucial part of what is known as Afghanistan’s garland road network that goes around the country connecting Herat to Kabul via Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar. But this road link apart, the North-South Transportation Corridor has mostly been gathering dust for a decade now.

In the meantime, the Chinese have aggressively built similar road and rail networks penetrating deep into the heart of Central Asian Region. The Karakoram Highway, which is under-construction in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and stands a direct threat to India’s security interests in that region, is also essentially an extension of this plan, and so is the Gwadar port in Pakistan that is being developed as a counter-balance to the Chabahar port in Iran, located less than 200km away.

This brings us to military-security aspect of India-Central Asia dynamic. As of now, India’s military footprint in that region is next to nothing. New Delhi had sought to shore up its prospects by taking over the Ayni air base in Tajikistan which would have given tremendous strategic depth in the region but its plans have most definitely been thwarted by Russia, the big brother in the region. India began renovating the Ayni air-field, located just outside the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, in 2004 and up until the end of 2010, Indian engineers were still working there. However, in the last three years, the Tajik Government which depends considerably on Moscow for financial aid, seems to have made clear that it will only let Russia use the air-base.

India’s other military assets in the region include a military hospital in Farkhor, also in Tajikistan. Set up in 2001 to treat Northern Alliance members fighting the Taliban, it was shut down after the US removed the militant group from power. But in recent years, there have been talks of re-opening that field hospital. 

The India-Tajik relationship is as far as India’s military presence goes in that region. And while there have been some positive indications of improving that footprint, it is unlikely to change significantly in the near future. Not only because China and Pakistan will do all that they can to limit India’s presence but also because Russia will probably not go all out to support India. The US is the only country which has unequivocally stated that it would like India to emerge as its regional partner (this explains Russia’s reluctance) especially post the 2014 Afghan pullout.

India remains an important player in its New Silk Road project that hopes to integrate the Afghan economy into that of Central and South Asia. But America’s diminished clout at this point (the NSR project has been all but discarded) it is unclear how far Washington, DC will be able to help on the ground. In other words, India is on its own.

(This article was published in the Op-ed sector of The Pioneer on August 22, 2013.)

Al Qaeda isn't going away soon

The ‘Syria problem' is playing out in other post-Arab Spring countries, from Libya to Tunisia and Egypt, where the space vacated by despotic regimes has been taken over by Islamic militants. Terror organisations have a ready platform

In May, US President Barack Obama said that he was hoping to “refine and repeal” the mandate that he got from the Congress to fight the war on terror against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, as the core group was on the “path to defeat” and “this war, like all wars, must end”. Less than three months later, he has evacuated the US embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, shuttered as many as 19 diplomatic missions across West Asia and North and East Africa and issued a month-long global travel advisory, fearing an attack by the terror outfit that was supposedly retreating.

The two don’t square up, not even if you take into consideration the Benghazi factor. Last year, the American Ambassador to Libya and three others were killed when the US mission in Benghazi came under attack. It was later revealed that the US Government had intelligence about the attack but had ignored it, causing much embarrassment, especially to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was accused of a cover-up.

Against this backdrop, it is understandable that the Obama Administration has this time around taken extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. But this also proves that the Al Qaeda still has the ability to mount a major terror attack on even well-guarded Western targets. 

Of course, questions may be asked about the quality of the threat perception that prompted Washington, DC, to take these unusual steps. But given the limited information in this regard that is available — we only know that the alerts were issued after intercepted electronic communication between Al Qaeda top bosses showed that chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had ordered the group’s head in Yemen, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, to attack Western targets —such questions can only lead to speculation and conspiracy theories regarding Edward Snowden’s former bosses at the National Security Agency.

Assuming that the threat is as significant as the US authorities believe it to be, there can be no denying that Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain strong and lethal. What’s more, there is ample evidence that the group will quite possibly grow stronger and more resilient in the immediate future. Recent developments in South and West Asia show that Al Qaeda will secure for itself more physical sanctuaries around the world in the next few years.

Historically, it is this access to safe havens that has been the group’s lifeline. As long as its leaders and operatives have a place to hide, Al Qaeda has repeatedly shown that it has the ability to adapt itself to changing circumstances, regroup and hit back with a renewed vengeance.

We are already seeing it in the AfPak region. Despite the fact that it has been at the receiving end of an international military campaign and its leaders have been hounded and hunted for more than a decade now, Al Qaeda has managed to survive because it continues to enjoy the hospitality of the Pakistani establishment. The extent to which Islamabad has shielded the terror outfit and others of its ilk is well delineated in the Abbottabad Commission report which shows how the entire state machinery looked the other way as Osama bin Laden built himself a veritable fortress on the outskirts of the national capital. Not only did he live there for nine years with many members of his family without anybody being the wiser, he also managed hands-on his global terror network from the Abbottabad residence — as we know from documents that were seized following the May 2011 US raid that killed him.

Now, with the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the physical sanctuary that Al Qaeda has in Pakistan will quite possibly extend in full to Afghanistan again — and before you know it, the group’s central command, or what President Obama refers to as the ‘Al Qaeda Core’, will be back to its original strength.

Interestingly, the weakening of the Al Qaeda Core has been one of the biggest achievements of President Obama’s otherwise tepid counter-terrorism policy, and indeed it was this that led him to proclaim that the group had been virtually defeated.

But now it seems that even that one significant gain might be reversed and soon, especially if the new Government that will replace Hamid Karzai’s administration in 2014 in Afghanistan, is unable to keep the militants at bay. In this context, the nature and number of US troops that will stay back in Afghanistan (and we know for sure that there will be some kind of a residual force) will be crucial.

Outside of the AfPak region, events in West Asia have been equally disconcerting. Syria, particularly, seems to have been run over by Al Qaeda operatives who have captured the popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. In fact, the Syrian civil war has played an important role in energising the group in the Levant, much like how the latter received a boost from the war in Iraq in the previous decade, as security analyst Bruce Hoffman notes in his latest article.

Not only is Syria yet another safe-haven in-the-making for Al Qaeda, it is also in the heart of the Arab world (and, therefore, closer to the group’s financiers in the region). Equally importantly, it places the terror group at the doorsteps of its sworn enemy, Israel, and another enemy, though to a lesser extent, Jordan. The recently created Al Nusr front, Al Qaeda’s flag bearer in Syria, has already established its credentials as a deadly sectarian force in the country and can no longer be ignored as a “bunch of guys” that owe allegiance to the black banner. That, instead of helping crush this force, the Obama Administration is planning to arm the Syrian rebels, is deeply distressing.

The ‘Syria problem’ is playing out in other post-Arab Spring countries as well, from Libya to Tunisia and Egypt where the space vacated by despotic regimes has been taken over by Islamic militants. Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the region have taken advantage of the weak and unstable Governments that have come to power recently to expand their toehold in the Sinai and the Sahel (think of the Al Qaeda flags that have become a regular at Muslim Brotherhood rallies in Egypt).

In effect then, more than a decade after the war on terror was launched, Al Qaeda is stronger today than it was before, having expanded and strengthened its footprint around the world.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on August 8, 2013)